By Vladislav Vorotnikov, Russia correspondent
Moscow - Autocomponent, which produces car parts for the largest Russian car maker VAZ, has purchased 99.83% of share of JSC Plastic. According to the sources from Plastic, one of the main purposes of the deal is to provide Autocomponent with enough volume of polyurethane foam for the production of automobile seats and other components.
Recently VAZ changed its vehicle line and toughened the requirements for its suppliers, which together with the other factors resulted in the negative operation indicators of Plastic. According to official report for 2012, the company reduced the volume of production by 20%, while income fell by 12.7% on year-to-year comparison.
The representatives of Autocomponent claim that the car parts producer bought Plastic to create the further modernisation of car part production using polyurethane foam. As it was suffering losses, Plastic did not have the necessary funds to invest in such modernisation.
"As far as I understood from our negotiations with the company from Nizny Novgorod [Autocomponent], there are no any serious changes in the work of our enterprise planning. The company has good relationships with VAZ so at the current context we can forecast that the number of orders from VAZ will grow," commented Maxim Simonov, Plastic CEO.
According to Plastic sources, the experts determined the cost of the deal at RUB2bn ($70m). The transaction charge will depend on the debt load that can decrease the final price. Experts pointed out that the deal will improve the market position of the company, which was struggling in recent years.
According to experts, the agreement has been initiated by Russia's largest commercial bank Sberbank and state-owned VAZ because Autocomponent is in fact a smaller company than Plastic, and does not have its own funds for such deals. So the Russian authorities decided to save Plastic to avoid a negative impact on the supply of components for the Russian automotive giant.
